pilgrimage

Everyone has a story.

It isn't science that offers the most compelling reasons for belief or unbelief, but our experiences with others and with the worlds we inhabit. In November of 2009 I told my own pilgrimage to Thomas Mathie over at the Something Beautiful Podcast. I told him before hand that I would leave nothing hidden. The more open we are with one another, the more organic and healthy our communities can be. This is true of our partnerships with those we love, our children, our extended families, our places of work, and our churches.

It has been my experience that mainline Protestant churches have a tendency to avoid getting raw and open with one another. Testimonies are rare if they are told at all. This has been my life as a Catholic and as Presbyterian. I would challenge any pastor to step off the pulpit one summer and invite people from the congregation to open up and share their testimony every Sunday morning. We have no idea how God is at work in our communities if we are not aware of how God has shaped each one of us in our lives and how we then reflect and relate to those experiences.

This is something we are building up to at my church and talking about our hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, and sources of conflict and bad blood has been uplifting. Without knowing ourselves and our history, we could not possible hear God calling us into our mission and life together. We are learning to hear God in each other's lives for the first time. Testimony. It alone preaches.

You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you (Ephesians 4:22-32).

We had a long chat and it's posted in three parts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

My intent was to be very honest. I apologize in advance if I inadvertently offended anyone. That was never my intent and those who have shaped me in my life to this day I love deeply. They have shaped me for who I am as much as any other influence that has come into my life.

Peace.

Related posts:

1. we were born to be loved
2. go where god is, not where you believe god ought to be.
3. media ministry gets the papal nod
4. functional agnosticism: a confession of sorts
5. the birth of the zombie preacher?